Week In Review (Feb 24 – Feb 28)

Expansion of the Week Redmond answered one of the most asked questions, and answered it in style. Many had been wondering what the future direction of the Windows Phone platform will be now that Nokia is part of Microsoft, but the company recently announced that it had signed up nine new partners. Well played.

Shuffle of the Week

One of the more readily recognizable executives from Microsoft, Julie Larson-Green had a change of job description this week. With the Nokia takeover almost complete, Stephen Elop has been picked to head the devices and gaming affairs at Redmond. Reorganizations, reorganizations.

Rumor of the Week

It is shopping season over at Redmond, as the company is said to be in talks with a number of popular sites and services regarding investments and acquisitions. One of the bigger names thrown around is Pandora, the Internet radio company. Earliest of rumors, but there you have it.

Statistics of the Week

While games have always been popular on PCs, there was little doubt that gaming on mobile platforms is equally trendy. This was once again confirmed by Redmond when it rolled outs its Windows Store trends for this past month. And games made up almost 40 percent of Windows 8.1 downloads.

Strategy of the Week

Microsoft is cooking something very special with the so-called Windows 8.1 with Bing variant of its operating system. This version is said to be aimed at users running older versions of the platform (like Windows 7 and Windows XP) as well as those that want affordable new devices.]]>